


Late Night Visitors

by mxmaelstrom



Category: Slipknot (Band), Stone Sour
Genre: Corey’s a bit drunk, Gas Station, Gen, Joey’s awkward, Lyra (o/c) is moody, Night shift - Freeform, its fanfic not reality, no idea if this correlates with IRL Joey and I don't care, pre-slipknot, thats my excuse anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21706078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mxmaelstrom/pseuds/mxmaelstrom
Summary: Joey usually likes the night shifts at Sinclair’s. Aside from a co-worker, often in the back whilst he worked the tills, he didn’t have to speak to many people, and he could take control of the station speakers to blast whatever he liked. Tonight is yet another night he’s glad of co-worker company.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Late Night Visitors

**Author's Note:**

> Yeet this is my first fic I’ve ever posted and it’s kinda self indulgent. Enjoy! More might follow, as this is a fic idea I would like to develop, but no promises. My tumblr is extreme-introvert.

Of all the few people Joey saw at the gas station, the weirdest was the annoyingly familiar, long haired man named Corey.

It had taken several weeks and three appearances for Joey to realise how he recognised Corey. Stone Sour, whilst well known in the rock circuit, were not massively famous, and Joey preferred the heavier side of metal, so he supposed it was little wonder he hadn’t recognised the man before now.

It wasn’t like he saw many people at his job anyway. Working the night shift and blasting death metal that tended to put people off a bit gave him the solitude he liked. Of course, he wasn’t completely alone. There were almost always two on the night shift, tonight his partner the silent and moody Lyra, a brick-shithouse of a woman he didn’t think he’d ever heard speak in the three years he known her.

Joey supposed he liked the company. She sometimes scared him, always so quiet despite her size, and almost always tossing boxes around in the back like they’d personally wronged her and she was going to make them pay, but she had always had his back when the customers got rough.

When he’d done the night shifts on his own, only a handful of times, it had been nerve-wracking. Despite nothing bad actually happening, he’s always been paranoid that someone would try and steal gas, or hold him at gunpoint, or beat him up, or various other bad situations that amped up his nerves. Lyra might not be able to do shit against a gun, unless she had one herself, but the few times someone had tried to start shit by roughing Joey around, taking advantage of his tiny stature, she’d just crept up behind them, creepily silent, and tossed them out like a nightclub bouncer. Maybe she had been one before working here.

Now Corey was in the station, capering around with presumably a band mate - he knew Stone Sour had been playing that night - and deliberating over snacks and beer. He looked on the way to being drunk already, and Joey didn’t know if he was entirely comfortable serving someone more in that state, but he didn’t want to risk one of the two going apeshit. Angry people were awful to deal with, but angry drunks were far worse. To make things worse, Lyra was in the back, heaving boxes or gas canisters or whatever, and she was making so much noise she probably wouldn’t hear if the pair got rowdy with him.Joey had been too lost in his own paranoid thoughts, eyes flickering to the door leading to the back, to notice the two stepping up to the till. He started and scanned their items wordlessly, eyes flickering up behind his fringe but mostly kept down. They paid, Corey rocking from side to side restlessly, and Joey breathed a sigh of relief when the bandmate turned. They were going.

Alas, he’d jinxed it.

“Joeyyyyyy.” The pretty singer in front of him was slurring, leaning on the counter, eyes staring at his name tag, then up at his face. A wide grin, cheshire-cat-like and creepily fey, was spreading across his face, and fluffy hair burst like a halo beneath a black beanie, pulled down against the November chill. The hair and the smile made Corey look like a fallen angel, Joey thought, then tried not to snort at his stupid poetic mind. “Joeeyyyyy.”

He repeated himself several times, each time more slurred, his grin growing colder and scarier by the second, until Joey could feel himself shaking. When Corey’s voice rose from a mutter to an almost yell, Joey found himself trying not to flinch. He succeeded until Corey accidentally spat, and his spit nearly hit Joey’s hand. The bandmate, whilst smirking initially, began to give Joey a sympathetic look as the singer kept chanting, each iteration of the cashier’s name more and more manic.

Finally, he finished tormenting him. Eyes unfocused, Corey looked behind Joey for a few seconds, squinting, trying to read something Joey initially wrote off as cigarette prices.

As it turned out, he was not trying to decipher cigarette prices. “Lyraaaaaaa.” He then started cackling to himself, singing her name to himself. Four chants in, he began to sway from side to side, looking like he was both trying to dance and not fall over, still grinning his cruel grin. Even his bandmate was now giving him The Look, not that he paid any attention.

Joey was glad that he wasn’t alone anymore, and wondered how rattled he looked. He was still shaking a bit, but the knowledge was wasn’t alone did something to calm him.

“Yes, that’s my name,” Lyra snapped after god knows how long Corey was chanting and giggling for. Her lack of fear helped Joey calm more, and, he noted proudly, he even got a hold of his nerves enough to stop shaking.

The unimpressed “off you go” was directed more towards the bandmate, Joey knew, as Corey certainly wasn’t in any state to listen to Lyra. The other man dragged Corey out by the arm. He was now chanting both their names, his voice rising to a yell, going from drunken creepy cheer to something close to hysteria and rage, and Joey’s fear briefly returned. Then the door swung shut behind them, and the station fell quiet, the singer’s voice muffled by glass and sounding almost miles away. Cradle of Filth continued to play quietly over the station speakers.

That was the first time, he realised in the silence, he’d ever heard Lyra speak.

She clapped him on the shoulder sympathetically, and when he turned round, huffed and left to continue whatever she’d been doing before Corey’s jabbering and laughing had interrupted her. The only pause she gave was to jerk her chin in acknowledgment to his thanks.

Joey was enjoying his break, slurping up a Pot Noodle in the staff room and checking the security cameras every so often for customers, when Lyra slumped next to him. Somehow, she avoided spilling her hot drink down him, and he idly wondered how she managed it. Her jacket was discarded somewhere, probably in the back, and she was sweating through her tank top. He had no idea what she’d been doing for the past two hours, but it was probably moving boxes and other heavy shit around. He felt a brief stab of shame that he didn’t help her, but whenever he’d tried to he’d been more of a hindrance, too short to reach the top shelves and barely able to climb onto a chair with the boxes without overbalancing and falling. He’d fallen twice, and whilst she hadn’t laughed at him, he still didn’t want to help in the back anymore out of fear of looking stupid.

He jumped when she spoke again.

“God, that Corey’s a stupid fucker.” Joey slurped more noodle, not sure how to respond.

Anyway, if he replied, she might not keep talking. “He thinks that cuz he’s got pretty eyes and pretty hair that he can do whatever.” She snorted to herself. Her next comment was most likely also to herself. “Likes picking on people shorter than him too. Fucking man-let.”

“He might be pretty, but I think he’d make an ugly woman.” He let the height comment slide, and wondered why now, now of all time, she was actually speaking.

“Really? I think he’d be kinda pretty. Bit butch.” She sighed, head flopping back, not noticing the irony. A few seconds later she sat up. “He scared you.”

Usually whenever anyone mentioned Joey and fear in the same sentence they were making fun him. Usually he’d jump on the defensive, arguing he didn’t get scared whilst getting angry enough to prove he had been scared. But Lyra wasn’t mocking him, so he just shrugged, not wanting to nod. She slipped an arm thick with muscle round his shoulder. The motion caused an odd wave of emotion, and he felt ten years old again, confiding in his sister at midnight about the larger boys picking on him.

To try and dispel whatever feelings that thought had left him with, he said,

“He thinks he has the whole world lying at his feet sometimes, I swear. ‘Least he acts that way.” Joey kicked his foot against the ground, finishing his noodles. It took a second for the thought that he was speaking not only of Corey, but also of his dad, to register. Huh. He hadn’t thought of his dad in ages. Must have been the thought of his sister that got him down that road of thought.

“Hm. Singers,” Lyra snorted, oblivious to his inner confusion. “Think the sun shines from their ass, don’t they?”

“Next time he sees you he probably won’t remember tonight. He’d probably try to hit on you, ‘specially if he’s drunk. ‘Huhhh. Y’wanna go for a drink sometime, pretty woman?’” He slouched and slurred in an imitation of Corey. Lyra laughed.

“Thanks but no thanks.”

“He not pretty enough for you? Don’t date singers?” Joey gently elbowed her side and hoped she hadn’t thought he was mocking her.

“He’s prettier than me and that’s unacceptable. Ha!” Joey withheld the urge to say he thought she was pretty. He wouldn’t be able to say it without going red, even though he didn’t fancy her, and it would make them both awkward. She must be about twenty five, so he’d look like a little kid with a crush on his babysitter.

Even if he was nearly twenty one. Lyra continued, not noticing him lost in thought. “No. I don’t wanna date someone who can drink when I can’t. It’s no fun.”

Curiously poked its head up. “Why? The you not drinking part, not why it’s not fun.”

She gave him a confused frown. “Cuz I’m not yet twenty one?”

He turned to face her at that, frowning. What the hell? “Wait, what? Aren’t you like twenty five?”

“No? I’m nineteen?” She looked so confused, her reply coming out more as a question than an answer, brows pulled down into a bemused frown.

“Wow. I’m older than you? I would have sold you alcohol without ID’ing you. Wow.” He turned forwards and stared wide eyed at the ground. “Wow.”

“Maybe I could buy alcohol, then.” She was quiet for a few seconds. “Nah. Someone else will probably ID me. Damn. You’re the only person who I could have bought alcohol from. Fuck.” She kicked at the chair leg, send her chair skidding an inch or so, but she was smiling. The noise had startled him, but she wasn’t truly angry, so he relaxed, glad he hadn’t flinched. Damn, Corey still had him spooked. Silence fell between them again for a minute, but then another question reared it’s head.

“You don’t have to answer this if you don’t wanna, but why don’t you talk much? I’ve known you three years, and tonight is the first time I’ve ever heard you speak.”

Lyra didn’t reply immediately.

She was quiet for so long he thought she was annoyed at him, and didn’t wanna talk to him anymore, but then she replied, jogging her leg. It was the first time he had ever seen her resemble discomfort, however mild it was. “I don’t usually have much to say, I guess. And if I don’t know someone well I won’t talk around them much, if at all.”

He thought she might say more, but a distant clock chimed three AM, interrupting their conversation, and they both stood to get back to work. She chucked her chin at him in her usually jerky manner before heading to the back again, usual silence restored, though her near-constant moodiness was now gone. He made his way to the till with a nod back, and was seated in time for a customer to enter to pay for gas.


End file.
